I wrote this up a while ago, so maybe if I clean it up and post it, it'll encourage me to continue.



The New Kid
The extended flashback which opens the book is kind of an appetizer to the second volume. Scott’s aborted fight with the bullies deflates your expectations, then you get lulled into the rhythm of the school scenes until you’re suddenly jarred out of it by the jump into River City Ransom territory (including a last boss called Simon). That’s the idea, anyway. I like the ambiguity of the flashback, and I don’t want to elaborate on it too much.

Some specific notes within the flashback:

"St. Joel’s" and "Benvie Tech", the rival schools, are named after the two leads from the dearly departed band Thrush Hermit (Joel Plaskett and Rob Benvie). I also have a friend named Joel who hails from Northern Ontario and this sequence is a bit of a nod in his direction. The actual exterior of St. Joel’s is referenced from a school in downtown Toronto, so I apologize for that. I just thought it was interesting-looking.

Scott’s high school basement is based on my parents’ house, where I lived during high school. His family is likewise loosely based on mine, including the dog (our old family dog, Princess, died in 2003). In one panel you can almost see that the game on-screen is Sonic & Knuckles, which shortly becomes the name of their band.

While working on this part, I suddenly vaguely remembered drawing idiotic little sheep in the 7th grade, so I stuck that in as Scott’s miraculous drawing ability.

You Suck, Surprising No-One
The bit where the panels get smaller and smaller was something I sort of saw in a manga one time and wanted to put to my own use. If you can’t read the very last one, he’s saying “I am rubber, you are glue” which is (apart from a generic comeback) kind of a Monkey Island thing.

I tried to put Scott in the skull shirt when bad stuff was about to happen. Here he breaks up with Knives. It happens in a record store called Sonic Boom, which is a real place near the corner of Bloor & Bathurst. When she invites him for dinner, he says “for Chinese food?” which is in my mind hilarious, in a racially-insensitive way. “Um, listen, I think we should break up or whatever” was one of the earlier lines I wrote, probably during Volume 1. I had some trouble laying this scene out, but I think in the end it turned out pretty well. The pages immediately after he says the line are at least slightly devastating, I hope.

The Bass Line From Final Fantasy Two
As many of you know, the intro to the bass line from Final Fantasy one through six (and nine) is ludicrously simple. The panel of Scott playing it is consciously influenced by Harold Sakuichi’s great manga, BECK.

I didn’t think about this at first, but “Rammy” is also the name of Um Jammer Lammy’s evil twin. The art style of Parappa the Rapper and Um Jammer Lammy (by the great Rodney Alan Greenblat) was obviously an influence on that of Scott Pilgrim, so consider it an unconscious homage.

Scott hates getting his hair cut because I hate getting my hair cut. (Not totally true – I have a reliable hairdresser now. I’m just constantly reluctant to go.) Also, in this scene we briefly see that he’s wearing a “Kraft” shirt, which used to be my favourite brand of peanut butter. (As of 2006 I eat the all-natural just-peanuts kind and have lost my brand loyalty.) That nefarious reading lamp reappears at the end of the scene, too.

Kim’s Morning
Her apartment is modeled on my sister’s old place on Bathurst. I think this scene is the first time I used a ruler to draw straight lines in this series. Shock! All those fish prints were totally present in my reference photos, I didn’t make them up. No-Account Video is lazily modeled on Suspect Video (the Markham St location). Full disclosure: it was Suspect Video in the script, but when I wanted to take reference photos they wouldn’t let me, so I changed the name and didn’t make the location terribly distinct.